With the Colonel’s Help: A Pride and Prejudice Variation

I awoke held in the strength of Otto’s arms. His breaths were long and deep, and his lids barely fluttered as he searched through his dreams.

Joy gushed from my spirit.

A deluge that surged and flooded, spilling through my body and overriding every question and reservation I’d ever held in my heart.

My gaze raced to take him in like this—so at peace—all the volatility that he radiated washed away, like he was captive to the same joy that bound me to him.

Affection pulsed as I traced the harsh, gorgeous edges of his face. Over his sharp brow and distinct nose, down to his jaw that was covered in stubble and the designs that covered his neck.

Carefully, I moved, slipping out from under the sheets and swinging a leg over his middle. As if he sensed the movement in his sleep, he followed the action, his hands gliding over my bottom and up to my waist as he rolled onto his back.

He groaned when I pressed myself against his cock. He was hard, so big beneath me that I had to wonder if what he’d been chasing behind his closed lids was me.

I thought maybe so because when they fluttered open there was no surprise on his face. There was only a cocky contentedness in the tweak of the smile that stretched across his full, plump lips.

I rolled slowly over him, making that smile grow.

“What do you think you’re doin’?”

My own grin took to my mouth, and I tried to play coy. “What does it look like I’m doing? Wishing you happy birthday, obviously.”

His hands smoothed back down my bottom as I slowly rocked over him. “Best fuckin’ birthday I’ve ever had. Waking up with you like this. A goddess hovering over me with the sun shining all over her stunning face.”

I edged forward, planting a hand on the mattress beside his head so I could whisper close to his lips. “And it’s only six in the morning.”

I had on a tank, and he reached over and pushed the fabric up a fraction to reveal the words tattooed on my side. Gentle fingertips trailed up the ink as if he were making the statement for me.

I will make it to the sunrise.

Here, with him, I wanted to stand in the sun.

Still, his voice was a grumble as he said, “And you’re supposed to be resting.”

My head barely shook. “I’m fine. I don’t even have a headache.”

“Raven,” he started to argue, and I closed the distance between our mouths, breathing the words through the brush of my lips. “I intend on celebrating you all day, Otto Hudson. Again and again. In every way that brings you pleasure.”

“Raven.” That time my name was a needy moan, and a ripple of satisfaction went blazing when I realized he was giving in.

He nudged me back so he could stare up at me, and a big hand cupped my cheek. “Are you sure you’re not hurting?”

“Oh, I’m hurting, Otto. Aching because I’m empty, and only you can fill me up.” I went for flirty. A tease. Hoping he would take the bait because I truly was hurting.

Hurting because of the way I needed him. The way I always had, and now that he was mine, I wanted to sate that need time and again.

Forever.

Endlessly.

“Yeah, you have that seduction part down pat, don’t you, Little Moonflower? You know I can’t deny you.”

“Why would you want to?”

He sat upright, bringing our chests flush. Flames sparked at the connection. A greedy sound worked its way up my throat, and my nails sank into his bare shoulders.

The muscles flexed and danced below them, his strength undulating through me on a wave.

“I can’t, Raven. Can’t resist you any longer.” His voice was hoarse.

Our noses were an inch apart, and my eyes flicked all over his face. “That’s because this is exactly where you’re supposed to be. Here, like this. With me. No longer denying what we were meant to be.”

“Is this what you were meant to be, Little Moonflower? Mine?”

“Yes. Just like you were meant to be mine.”

“Then it sounds like this is definitely going to be the best birthday I’ve ever had.”

“I think I know how to make it even better,” I murmured as I edged back so I could pull him from his briefs.

Otto groaned as I fisted him, stroking him slow and hard as I watched the pleasure rattle through his features. “Oh, yeah. This birthday is definitely gettin’ better and better. Only one thing might make it extraordinary,” he rumbled.

“What’s that?”

“Unwrapping you.”

A gasp rocked free when he suddenly tossed me off him and onto my back. I bounced on the mattress, and I was giggling as he climbed onto his knees.

Fully predatory. Sporting the most scandalous smirk I’d ever seen.

Excitement buzzed through my belly. A torch of anticipation glowed bright.

He reached out and took the hem of my tank, lifting it before he carefully pulled it over my head.

Cool air breezed over my flesh, and goosebumps erupted as arousal rushed to my core.

“You sure are wasting no time. And here I was worried you might be one of those guys who carefully unwraps a present so the paper can be reused.”

Okay, I totally knew he wasn’t. I’d watched this man tear into every gift I’d ever given him, far too eager to find what was hidden inside.

“Nah, darlin’. The real treasure is what’s underneath.”

He had the tiny scrap of undies I was wearing tattered with a quick jerk of his hand.

I yelped at the tiny sting against my skin, shivers rolling through me because I liked it so much.

“And look at that. Best gift I’ve ever been given. One I’m going to cherish for the rest of my life,” he said, gaze devouring me as he hovered high on his knees

I spread mine in invitation. “All yours, birthday boy.”

Otto chuckled a dark sound. “That’s right, baby. All mine.”

He was out of his underwear and picking me up and spinning me around in the flash of a second. He pressed my front to the headboard at the same second as he thrust into me from behind.

Bliss raked up my throat on a surprised shout, then I whimpered his name when he withdrew and then drove right back in.

“Otto.”

“Fuck, you feel so good,” he growled as he wound a fist up in my hair.

He pulled my head to the side and laved kisses along the sensitive flesh of my neck. “So goddamn good. Nothing in my life, Raven Tayte. Nothing in my life has ever felt as good as this. Nothin’ in this world as good as you. Not one thing.”

I held onto the headboard as he filled me to the brim. He kept himself plastered against my back, his arms wrapped so tight around me I knew there was no chance he’d ever let me go.

His movements were deep and hard as he began to move.

Intensity filled the morning air. A dense awareness that consumed. His grunts low and his whispers soft.

Passion bound, a rippling of energy that crackled through the room.

Warm rays of sunlight cut through the lush trees that surrounded his house, but it was still dim enough outside that I could see our reflection through the panes of glass over the top of the headboard. Could see the ecstasy carved through his expression as he possessed me in a way I’d never been possessed.

No question or reservation left.

Just us.

Just this.

He took my hands and pressed them to the window, his fingers threaded through mine as he kissed along my jaw as he rolled into me.

“Nothing, Raven. Nothing as good as this. You are the piece I’ve been missing.”

I turned my head toward him, taking his mouth in a fervid kiss as I arched my hips back, basically sitting on his lap as I ground against him, desperate to chase the feeling that swept through me like a windstorm.

A howling of pleasure that whipped through my body and wept in my ears.

“Otto…please. Yes…I’m…”

“I can feel it, Raven. Your sweet cunt gripping me tight. Can sense it. The way every inch of you glows. My moonflower. Most gorgeous fuckin’ bloom…shining in the darkness and leading me to the light.”

I came apart at that. The bliss breaking me in two.

A torrential downpour that gushed through me in a flashflood of rapture.

A desirous moan erupted with it, and Otto swallowed it down as he kissed and kissed me, his fucks hard as he gripped me against the fiery planes of his drenched flesh.

Pleasure throbbed and rolled, and Otto fully curled himself around me as he gave. I could feel its sparks. His own glow that burst wide open. Blinding bliss that ruptured the air and streaked through our bodies.

We both were panting and covered in sweat when the shocks finally stopped shooting through us. Otto pried me from the headboard, and I sagged against him when he picked me up.

He shifted and laid us down on the bed, facing each other.

Silence stretched between us.

An awareness.

A promise.

Just this knowing that we had no end.

“Happy birthday,” I finally whispered, no tease to my voice.

Otto reached out and ran his knuckle down the side of my face. “Best birthday ever.”

“I want to spend every one of them with you,” I admitted through the calm stillness that had taken over his room.

A soft puff of air escaped his nose, and he kept tracing his fingers over the contours of my face. “Have spent the last seven years wanting that, Raven. Wanting to belong to you. Wanting to be the lucky bastard who got to sleep next to you and wake up with you in his arms. The lucky bastard who got to love you and cherish you and give you everything in this world that you’ve ever wanted.”

“And the one thing I wanted was you.”

“Guess we spent a whole lot of time wishing for the same thing. And now, I’m gonna watch my moonflower glow beneath every moon and shine beneath every sun. Can’t wait to spend my life getting to watch you stretch those wings and soar.”

Euphoria singed through my being, scorching my heart and blistering my soul.

A dent furrowed between Otto’s eyes. “Just don’t ever want to be the one to hold you back.”

I raked my nails through the shadow that covered his jaw. “And what ever made you think you would do that?”

Those eyes had become a toiling, raging sea. Wrought with so much turmoil it was terrifying to contemplate their depths.

“Because of Sovereign Sanctum?” I asked, needing to understand every intricacy about him.

A heavy sigh suffused the air between us, and he kept caressing my face, though I was unsure which of us he was trying to give comfort to.

“Yeah. Because I always envisioned a better life for you. One above what we do.” He hesitated, then muttered, “Because of your brother, of course. But none of those things really had true bearing on my fear of giving into my love for you.”

“And what kept it from me?” I kept scratching my fingers over his jaw, letting them glide over his lips, my heart pinned to his as I waited for him to completely open up.

Shame wrenched through his expression. “This hatred inside me, Raven.”

I didn’t have to search around to grasp his meaning. Didn’t have to hunt for what he was referring to.

It hovered over us. A grim, bloodthirsty specter that clung to our psyches.

Did he think I didn’t understand it? That I didn’t feel it myself?

“You’ve always blamed yourself,” I murmured.

Otto flinched. “Of course, I’ve always blamed myself. It was my fault.”

My head barely shook. “I don’t think so, Otto. I don’t think there was anything that either of us could have said or done that would have stopped her from pursuing him.”

Haddie had thought she was in love with Gideon, and he’d convinced her that he was in love with her. But it’d all been a ruse. Gideon using her as a puppet to stoke the contempt between him and Otto.

I still didn’t know why Gideon had despised Otto the way he had, the way he’d wanted to ruin him.

But they’d felt the scourge of it after Otto had retaliated.

Grief seized my heart as I thought of it, the loss that permeated the hole that had been left after she’d been stolen from us.

Agony tore through Otto. Palpable and alive as he stared at me, never looking away.

“That right there, Raven. What I just saw play out in those beautiful eyes. The demons and scars that remain. That’s why I’ve been terrified of giving into my love for you. Because I bear the same wounds, but they are so vile and ugly and gnarled that I know the only thing I’m going to do is taint you with it.”

“I hate them, too,” I admitted on a devastated whisper.

Sorrow pulsed through his features, and he ran his callused palm over my cheek before he set it on my jaw. “I don’t just hate them, Raven. I want to destroy them. End them. And I won’t stop until I do.”

Knots curled in my stomach, and his thick throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. As he opened up to me the way I’d wanted him to do.

Begged for him to do.

But I didn’t know how to handle this.

“I’m sick with the need for revenge,” he continued, his voice coarse and jagged with the admission. “So sick that I hate that someone else got to end four of them that day. Hate that they took the vengeance that was mine. Have hated them for so long for taking that from me. But no one is going to steal the vindication of ending the rest.”

What did he mean? Was he…actively seeking them out?

Oh God.

I couldn’t breathe as I flew upright. My back was to him as I struggled to get oxygen into my lungs. Trying to suppress an anxiety attack from bubbling up and taking over.

I could feel his shame roll over me in surging waves.

His reticence.

His acceptance of the conviction he was sure was coming.

“That’s why, Raven. That’s why you should stay away from me. That’s why I’m terrified I might be the reason someone is after you. That’s why I’ll never be good enough for you. I’m fuckin’ sorry I’m not better. I want to be. Fuck, I want to be better. But I’m not, and there’s no stopping this part of who I am.”

Tell him, tell him, tell him.

My insides screamed, but I couldn’t get the words to form on my tongue.noveldrama

Otto released an agonized sigh from behind, and I felt the bed shift as he sat up on the opposite side. “I’ll take you back to River’s.”

Is that what he thought? That I’d reject him because of this?

I flew around and had myself plastered around his back in a flash, my arms banded around his body. I pressed my face into the side of his neck, gasping as I breathed him in, and I told him the one thing that I could manage. “Do you think I could ever blame you? They’re monsters, and none of them deserve to live. Not after what they did.”